ABSTRACT
Friedrich Engels was born in the German town of Barmen in 1820 and was the son of a manufacturer of deep pietistic convictions. Engels probably appeared to him as little more than a romantic dilettante, not very different from other young 'critical theologians' he had met in Berlin. Yet to say that Engels was a poor systematic sociologist, or even that he sold out Marxist sociology to a kind of evolutionary positivism, is not entirely to deny his greatness. Karl Marx had already met Engels again and entered into a working partnership with him. The Manifesto itself is a remarkable document, which Engels and karl Marx understand too little because one have read it too much. Engels had first directed Marxism into the sphere of political economy. The ensuing important Marxist works are The Holy Family and The German Ideology, and these works remain helpful in understanding original Marxist sociology.
